Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti – Driving Through Remote Northern Tanzania to Deliver Funds

This is the third of a four part series on Team Tanzania Development Support’s 2016 trek to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and its delivery of charitable donations to the Village of Nyegina in Tanzania’s Mara region. For other parts of this series, please use the term “Kilimanjaro” in this site’s search function.

We are heading west through remote northern Tanzania from Moshi toward Musoma and Nyegina. Our mission now is to deliver the funds our donors have so generously given as part of the climb we have just finished.

We enter the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and descend into the expanse of the crater. Wildlife of all types is seen. Four of the Big Five (elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo, and lion) are soon checked off of our list. Only the leopard remains to be seen. Meanwhile, roaming placidly on the flats are thousands of zebra, gazelles, and wildebeests. The scene is idyllic, all animals peacefully co-existing with each other. We know, though, that by dusk, the scene will become a killing field when the lions and hyenas become active.

We spend the night in a designated tent camp area. At dinner, we are warned to put all food inside the trucks. Except for our boots and shoes, we leave nothing with any scent inside the tents. Hyenas have been known to nose under a tent's vestibule and walk off with food, shoes, and other items, attracted to the smells and salts.

We are also warned to bring our headlamps with us in the event we need to use the bathroom at night. Before turning in, I scan the brush line that surrounds our camp. I am alarmed to see many pairs of eyes reflecting light back at me. All is dark save for the security light at the nearby cook shack. My headlamp supplements its weak light and shows me that Cape buffalo and wildebeests are lining up, waiting for us to be in our tents and for all to be quiet. It is only then do they move in to graze on the sweet grasses that make up our campground.

I awake in the middle of the night to hear the unmistakable sound of large animals pulling up the grass and masticating. This goes on for hours. They are very close, right next to the tent. With the help of the cook shack light, I see a silhouette of a large, four legged beast against our tent wall. The tent shakes as it brushes by. It is pulling the grass and chewing right next to our heads. I have to use the bathroom but smartly decide to wait until things outside settle down.

We leave camp the next morning and descend from the crater's rim at its northwest side. Maasai tribal villages, thatched huts and wooden livestock enclosures for the most part, dot the slopes of the crater. They are up early going about their work-a-day lives. Some line the road dressed in their warrior masks or other full regalia hoping we and other tourists will stop and pay them a few dollars to take their pictures.

Meanwhile, they tend to their cattle and goats. While surrounded by wildlife of all types, they only eat from those they have domesticated, for they want to be "friends" with those which can do them harm.

We later arrive at Olduvai Gorge. The site is known primarily for one thing, but after today, it is now known for two things. This is where the Leakey's discovered fossils of the oldest know hominids. But it is now also known as the site where I made an embarrassment out of myself. Within yards of the actual site where the skulls and bones were found, I slip and fall on the greasy mud, scraping my elbow, spraining my thumb, and getting my clothes filthy. It made for a great show in front of my fellow travelers, the guide, and several archeologists in the area.

We travel through the desolate frontier between the Conservation Area and the Serengeti. It is the season of the wildebeest migration. For miles and miles, there are hundreds of thousands of the animals, viewable for 360 degrees and for as far as the eye can see. Just as spectacular, but far less known, is the concurrent zebra migration. They don't co-mingle with the wildebeests - there are the wildebeests then, abruptly, there are the zebras. Spectacular.

We continue our long western progress toward Musoma, much of which is through the remaining expanse of the Serengeti. We occasionally stop to view other interesting wildlife. At shallow pools, we see hippos wallowing in the mud. 

Other trucks from other tour companies are nearby doing the same. Several of the trucks hold a gaggle of American sorority-type girls. Short shorts, low cropped shirts leaving nothing to the imagination, drinking import beers.....ugh! It is all so glaring in its cultural insensitivity to the lands in which they are traveling. They fulfill the stereotype of young, privileged, white girls.

We arrive at the Epheta Center in Musoma late in the evening. We're tired, sore, and covered in dust. Sleep comes easily.

A video of the transit through Ngorongoro and the Serengeti is at: